Hi

Day 9 and its Saturday... whoo hoo. Late nights computing
for me which means a mix of mucking around with Amigas
and playing the odd game on the PS2.. Still Xenosaga..at
this time and becoming a bit of an epic. Usual thing.. levelling
up to gain more skills and to varying party members. Getting
quite powerful now... Good game this. Anyway. I was mucking
around with my A600 this morning, before my Windows
nightmare and got to thinking of the history of the machine
in my hand... So sit back cus there is a threesome here... ooh er!!

Day 9 scuzz blog.. The three Amigateers.....

It all started one night returning back from work. Usual
trip.. microwave dinner, get changed, Microvitec on and
then the Amiga... I returned to the large computer table...
[ side quest.. describes computer station... ] To the right
is a long bench filled with disk boxes of various Amiga
applications... under are drawers full of same. At 1 o'clock
I have my Microvitec monitor perched on a couple of
old books. In front is my trusty A1200 with GVP accelerator.
Plugged in the side is my PCMCIA RAM card. The computer
also has a high density drive and Cannon bubblejet printer.
To the left on a stacked shelf are years of Amiga mags. In front
and high are stacked Amiga games. To low left is a special
bench I have for video work, with video recorder and stereo
equipment... Plugged in is the VidiAmiga and TechnoSound
lies on the large table.... This is the cockpit of the Amiga
Workstation for 1995... but wait... ( I return from changing )...
No monitor... no signal... Amiga on... bugga.  Panic...
Anyway the monitor is dead... I mean real dead. A night
without the Amiga... my goodness... life stands still.
Next day I ask about a repair place... and a guy suggests I
go to this place in Broadstone. Anyway I travel over there
and sure enough he fixes the Microvitec. Just the switch.
Anyway I got to worrying and thought about getting another
monitor.... NOW... This is a key moment in the scuzz retro
collection timeline, cus this is where it all started....

I picked up the Diamond Free Adds and noted a guy had an
Amiga 600 for sale plus... MONITOR.. Whoo hoo. I travelled
to Ringwood ( my first Amiga adventure ) and met with this
lad and took all of his kit off him for £100. He was amazed
when I said I only really wanted the monitor. Getting home I
plugged in the 600 and thought it to be quite cute. Trouble,
however, busted mouse and joystick ports... I travelled to
Broadstone again and got these fixed. Next  up I bought
a RAM expansion for the 600. I also got another copy of
Sensible Soccer and set up another workstation. I was
talking to a friend about Diamnond Free adds and soon
I was on my second adventure... This time to pick up an
A500 and Dorchester bound. I was getting the hang of this
now... The A500 found its way to me and I another trip to
Broadstone got me a new power brick . I set up yet another
workstation, this time a small table in the lounge and spent
most nights playing Lotus and Road Rash... couldn`t put the
thing down...

Amazingly I was again into the Diamond Free Adds and couldn`t
resist another A1200. This cost me £200 even then. I travelled
through rain and wind to Bovington Army Camp... Where they drive
tanks. It was a miserable night. I was directed from the gate to
the living quarters of the men where I met this bloke with A1200
lying in front of TV. The kids were mucking about and one got the
disk stuck... No problem he said as he jambed a fork in the slot
to retrieve the disk. Anyway I took the A1200 and finished up back in
Broadstone getting the drive fixed. The guy there had got to know
me quite well now...

And so it was that the Amiga retro collection was started.. From
A600 to A500 to another A1200. So by the November of 1995 I
had the beginnings of what you see today. And they are still all
here and still working wonderfully. The A500 was a pig to be
honest. I bought a MTEC expansion drive and while fitting the
hard drive managed to push one of the pins in... Very very
annoying. Have tried to mend it several times....

And so Day 8 you get three Amig'os.. The A600, A500 and A1200.
And Sensible Soccer, Road Rash and Worms... ' nutter '

Featured Amiga 600

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz33.htm

Amiga A600
Manufacturer: Commodore
Year: 1992
OS Amiga DOS Release 2 + WorKBench 2.x
CPU: Motorola 68000 7.14mhz
RAM: 1024 kilobytes
Expandable to 2 megabytes
Maximum RAM expansion 6MB with PCMCIA
ROM: 512 kilobytes
Video: CSG "Daphne/Denise" chip
Co-processors: Agnes (MMU), Daphne (video), Portia (Sound & I/O)

Text: 60 X 32 and 80 X 32
GRAPHIC MODES 320 x 256 / 320 x 512 / 640 x 256 / 640 x 512
Hires: 320 X 200 through 640 X 512
4096 colour palette
Colours 32 (for 320 x X modes), 16 (for 640 x X modes)
among 4096 + two special modes EHB (64 colors) and HAM
(4096 colors)
Sound: CSG "Portia/Paula" chip
Four voice stereo Sound

Ports: CSG "Portia/Paula" chip
25 pin Centronics Parallel port
25 pin RS232 Serial port
Stereo RF Sound plugs
9-pin Mouse/Joystick ports (X2)
25-pin Amiga Floppy port
23-pin Amiga Video port (DB23 15 kHz)
Composite RF Video port
PCMCIA Slot (Type II)
IDE Port
Hard Drive Controllers: 1 x 2.5" IDE Controller (unbuffered)
1 x 2.5" Hard Drive Cradle
Keyboard: Full-sized 78 key QWERTY
Full-stroke keyboard, 78 key (no numeric keypad)
Expansion Slots: 1 x 40 pin Trapdoor Slot
4 direction cursor-pad
Extra hardware:
Internal 880K 3.5" Floppy Disk Drive (DB23)

Weight 6 lbs
The A600 was released during the summer of 1992 and was
intended to replace the Amiga A500 Plus. The big shock to
Amiga users at the time was the size of the A600, just 14"
deep by 9.5" wide and 3" high. This was the smallest classic
Amiga yet and specifically aimed at the games console market

The machine boasted 1Mb of chip memory, ECS and Workbench 2.05.
Commodore managed to get the size down by shrinking the keyboard
by removing the numeric keypad. The machine also introduced
the PCMCIA slot which together with its 78 keys made it almost
laptop worthy. The slot was intended to allow expansion with
CD drives and the like. The fatter Agnus chip was fitted as
standard which allowed up to 2 Mb Chip RAM as standard and a
maximum RAM expansion of 6 Mb.

Evidently the original Amiga A600 was going to be sold as an
Amiga A300 and was supposed to be a low spec machine at a level
below the A500 series. In the end however the A500+ was cancelled
in favour of the A600. The machine was rebadged and sold at the
same price of the A500. Some of the first A600s shipped still
had the A300 stamped on the motherboards. These models had no
IDE interface and are very rare

Workbench
Workbench Release 2.05, v37.71, 37.72
(Kickstart v37.299, 37.300, 37.350)
Released: 1992 With new ROM (512KB) and software
Was shipped with: Amiga 600, 600HD, available as update
Enhancements:
Hard drive support for larger than 40MB (from Kickstart v37.350)
High-density floppy drives supported
Support for PCMCIA slots via "CC0:" device (from Kickstart v37.300)
Internal IDE support (from Kickstart v37.300)
Recoverable RAM drive renamed to RAM_0:
Included "PrepCard" on the Extras disk for the PCMCIA slot

Important hard-drive info
Different variations of drives supported pre v37.350
v37.350 the first version to have no size limit
4GB maximum drive supported generally
v37.299 Will not auto-boot any hard-drive
v37.300 will boot drives only of 40Mb or smaller ( questionable)
There have been reports of 37.300 supporting bigger drives

v37.72 removed speech support
Although speech support was removed from 2.1 there is
evidence that some 2.05 disks were shipped without it

The Install disk was only shipped with Amigas with hard-drives
Some early A600s were shipped not with 2.05 but with 2.04
and thus had no internal IDE or PCMCIA support and therefore
unlucky early A600 owners had to upgrade the ROM chip to
so they could benefit from 2.05


Motherboard Revisions: Rev 1.0 (Extra chip below gayle
(CBM 391287-01) and is labelled A300)
Rev 1.1, 1.3, 1.5, 2B
Rev 2D (1/4" shorter than Rev 1.0)
No battery backed clock

[ end A600 stuff ]

There you go scuzz C-A-R Advent Calendar for 9th December 2006.
And now my dinner in the oven is well and truly burnt....

:-)

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

It is with regret that I report that the Amiga community has
lost one of its brightest lights.

Following a few months battle with both lung cancer and
a brain tumer Gary Peake passed away in November.

Gary will be remembered as one of the founding members
of the biggest Amiga user group. Gary set up Team Amiga
with Rick Lembree and through this involvement ended up
working for Amiga Inc for a short period of time.

Gary was truly one of those guys that actually cared about the
Amiga.. He will be missed.

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

Hi

An online Commodore magazine....

Strange one this... PDF or text.  And up to issue 2 no less.

[ quote ]

A free download only Magazine dedicated to Commodore computers,
The Website has been designed to work with as many browser progams as
possible
However if you have a problem please let me know Thanks for supporting
Commodore.

http://www.commodorefree.com

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

Commodore Amiga 600

Added to the collection is yet another boxed
A600. This time however, the box is in much
better condition.